Monday, November 26, 2007

More sunshine on IPA

Florida's largest newspaper, the Miami Herald, gave major treatment to the story of fraud complaints against the controversial business consulting firm International Profit Associates and noted that the Florida Attorney General has turned over the information to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Florida's attorney general has registered 28 complaints against IPA and passed those concerns along to its Illinois counterpart, which is investigating the company. While IPA has been sued by individual clients in the past, this is the first time that former customers have banded together in court.

That was Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum's first mistakeâ€”if he wants anything done about IPA. Madigan, a Democrat, has been investigating IPA, a political donor, for more than four years without producing any results. And the Democratic Attorneys General Association, the political action committee of Democratic AGs, took one of its largest campaign donations, $50,000, from IPA last year in the midst of Madigan's "probe."

Getting anyone in Illinois interested in IPA fraud complaints will be difficult. The New York Times and now the Miami Herald have delved deeply into the IPA matter but not the Chicago media. That is puzzling to say the least considering that IPA is headquartered in suburban Buffalo Grove and it has showered Illinois politicians with hundreds of thousands in campaign donations. IPA also has given Hillary Clinton more than $150,000. For all my posts on IPA, go here.

There are active communities of victims who vent their frustrations with IPA here, here and now at the bottom of the Miami Herald story.

A friend recently asked me if the Illinois media freeze on IPA was related to the IPA radio and TV ads that seem to air constantly on Chicago stations. Seems like a fair question.